What's the historical origin of drinking champagne on New Year's Eve?
score:13
We drink champagne on New Year's in large part due to savvy marketing in the late 19th century.
At first, royal favor made champagne an easy sell to the nobility. But with the rise of industrialization in the 19th century, the nobles were no longer guaranteed to be the wealthiest consumers. Champagne producers dangled their products in front of the newly rich merchant class: an aspirational beverage. Of course, these new customers couldn’t afford to drink champagne every day, but they could afford it on special occasions. Soon they began ordering it for all celebrations. Champagne became de rigueur at festivities from weddings to ship christenings -- to ringing in the New Year. (source)
But another aspect of this question is, why champagne and not prosecco or any other sparkling alcoholic beverage? Kolleen Guy, author of When Champagne Became French also cites the savviness of French marketing in the late 19th century, noting that newspaper ads in the 1880s tied together champagne, family togetherness, and occasions like Christmas and New Year's. The French state didn't want this marketing blitz (or champagne's prestige in general) to spill over to other sparkling wines and accidentally benefit Spanish or Italian producers. Accordingly, the government passed domestic legislation and negotiated international agreements that helped to create and protect the identity of "champagne" as something legally distinct from and superior to all other sparkling wines (see pages 1-9 and 120-122 especially).
More post
- 📝 Did Hitler, or any non USSR residents in the 30s-40s know about Stalin's purges?
- 📝 Why are doomsday predictions for 2012 seen as incompatible with historical Maya mythology/religion?
- 📝 What is the historical evidence for asserting Huns were one and the same as Xiongnu?
- 📝 Have historians envisioned how World II would have developed without Churchill as Prime Minister of Britain?
- 📝 What is the historical basis for the claim that "Taiwan has always been part of China"?
- 📝 How do we know baroque art depicted obese ladies because of a different ideal of beauty?
- 📝 How would a 16-17th Century European Rapier have been made?
- 📝 How did Lincoln's views change up to the Lincoln-Douglas Debates?
- 📝 Was simply addressing the English monarch wrongly ever a punishable crime?
- 📝 Is there any sort of list of Roman senators?
- 📝 Language of Franks vs later French
- 📝 During the Chola dynasty how extensive was the use of Sanskrit in government and by the people?
- 📝 Why did Christianity disappear in North-Western Africa?
- 📝 Will someone help me understand the following quotation about Calvinism?
- 📝 How was the Karwendel railway important to Germany's plans for WW1?
- 📝 Did any Native Americans make tomahawks from metal?
- 📝 How professional and well equipped were US Civil War soldiers?
- 📝 Why were the Germans and Russians so fixated on an unlikely "separate peace" in 1945?
- 📝 What was Pope Innocent III's response to the Children's crusade led by Stephan of Cloyes?
- 📝 Plate armour worn by men-at-arms fighting on foot 1380-1415
- 📝 How many 'pubs' (alehouses, inns and taverns) were there in England in 1577?
- 📝 How do historians know the details of a seemingly private event?
- 📝 Were the earliest Egyptian hieroglyphs ever discovered really found in Qustul in Ancient Nubia?
- 📝 Why did Cao Cao slaugther the inhabitants of towns?
- 📝 Was Christopher Columbus Polish?
- 📝 Jewish Slave Owners in the United States
- 📝 What were the reasons for making Prohibition a constitutional amendment?
- 📝 Did international laws on wars of conquest change in 1945?
- 📝 How did close-knit and urban society function before the advent of daily bathing?
- 📝 What was the first solar eclipse that was demonstrably predicted in advance?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 What's the historical origin of drinking champagne on New Year's Eve?
- 📝 What is the historical origin of the Jewish Sabbath?
- 📝 Can the new testament be a valid historical record on the real life of Jesus?
- 📝 What is the historical origin of the story of the Temptation of Christ?
- 📝 Why did Native Americans die from European diseases while Europeans didn't catch serious diseases from the New World?
- 📝 What is the origin of 3 meals a day?
- 📝 What do the phone number suffixes J, M, R, W in 1940 New York phone book mean?
- 📝 What are the factors that caused the new world civilizations to be less technologically advanced than the old world?
- 📝 What was the historical context of the 2nd amendment to the US Constitution?
- 📝 During the breakup of the Soviet Union, on what basis was citizenship granted or withheld for each of the fifteen new republics?
- 📝 What is the origin of the stereotype that Polish people lack intelligence?
- 📝 What is the historical basis for the Exodus?
- 📝 Is there a historical explanation as to why the USA people are so litigious compared to the French?
- 📝 Has there ever been a major migration from the New World to the Old World? If not, why?
- 📝 Is there a historical precedent to the vaccine scare?
- 📝 Did Germany's role in WW2 affect the historical perception of its role in WW1?
- 📝 Are there historical instances of the capital of a colonising country being temporarily or permanently shifted to one of its colonies?
- 📝 Why didn't the Moroccans try to explore and conquer the New World?
- 📝 What is the origin of the "wheat and chessboard" legend?
- 📝 How did the gold of the new world cause the Spanish Empire to collapse?
- 📝 What is the historical basis for the claim that "Taiwan has always been part of China"?
- 📝 Why do the Japanese sing Ode to Joy during the Japanese New Year?
- 📝 Did the aborigines of Australia and the Maoris in New Zealand know about each other's existence, before the Europeans came?
- 📝 What was the shortest time between a historical event occuring and a museum opening dedicated to said event?
- 📝 What is the origin of the names of planets in Arabic?
- 📝 What is the last historical mention of people worshipping the Roman gods?
- 📝 Is the scarlet letter 'A' a real historical thing?
- 📝 Why did Canada, Australia and New Zealand separate from the UK?
- 📝 When did the use of fabricated speeches in historical works go out of fashion?
- 📝 Which lost historical documents, when uncovered, led to the most substantial revisions in historiography?